


Opportunity

by OtterSeaborne



Series: EGS [1]
Category: El Goonish Shive
Genre: Exhibitionism, F/F, F/M, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-27
Updated: 2018-07-27
Packaged: 2019-06-17 06:09:01
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,074
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15455040
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/OtterSeaborne/pseuds/OtterSeaborne
Summary: Ashley gets a look behind the scenes of the movie review show.





	Opportunity

Susan looked up from her locker to find Elliot was awkwardly fiddling with his hair “Uh, about the movie we’re reviewing?”

“Yes?”

“Um, the only day Ashley’s free this week is the same day we were going to watch it and...”

“Well, we can try to reschedule but...” Susan was already going over her work schedule and homework due dates when she was interrupted.

“Oh, no, I was going to ask if she could watch it with us. I promise I’ll pay attention.” Elliot’s good nature and commitment was one of the reasons she was friends with him in the first place, so she trusted his word on that.

“Oh. Um. That would be. Fine.” Susan cursed her voice for catching and hoped desperately that she wasn’t blushing.

“Okay. I’ll give you a little something for the extra popcorn.” Elliot’s face lit up like a puppy on a walk.

“That’s really not necessary.” Susan wasn’t about to wind up broke over an extra packet of microwave popcorn, and besides, the chance of getting to see Elliot kissing again was more than worth it.

* * *

After school Susan opened her door to Elliot, who was relaxed as usual, and Ashley, who was blushing furiously. She genuinely wasn’t sure which of the exclusive suburb, the absurdly large house, or the behind-the-scenes look at the making of the review show was flustering the young woman more. Or perhaps they’d decided to sneak a moment alone in the car when they had the chance? But Elliot was terrible at hiding things, and he didn’t seem embarrassed. Probably just the fact that the house had more floors than residents, then. Susan had thought for a while that it was a bit ridiculous, but her mother wouldn’t hear of moving – or at least, not moving somewhere even more glamorous and opulent, which meant well out of Moperville. And Susan definitely didn’t want that.

She ushered the couple to the lounge room, encouraging them to make themselves at home, then headed for the kitchen to sort out popcorn. She was vaguely aware of talking and some shifting weight on the couch behind her, but busied herself getting the popcorn started, then collecting the various bowls and implements she preferred for eating it. Hopefully Elliot had mentioned the merits of chopsticks for popcorn to Ashley at some point, but at least Susan probably wouldn’t have to show her how to hold them. And if she did, her hand sanitiser was where it always was in her purse, so that would be okay too. As the noise of the microwave ended, it became clear that there were some decidedly contented moans coming from the lounge. Apparently they hadn’t stopped in the car to get that out of the way. Susan shrugged to herself and collected the food – she doubted those lovebirds would mind sharing a bowl if they shared so much else.

* * *

She turned around, and it felt like time stood still. Elliot was sitting on the couch, and Ashley almost completely covered him. Her knees straddled Elliot’s thighs while her hands gripped his upper arms for balance. Elliot’s hands played around the hem of Ashley’s shirt, while their faces – their faces pressed together, eyes shut or almost so. She could hear the leather creak every time they shifted, see every small movement in the swaying of Ashley’s ponytail. She drank in the sight, catching every detail she could. As she noticed that Ashley had left her shoes by the door and her feet poking off the edge of the couch, several chopsticks slipped from her hand and clattered on the kitchen tiles. The noise drew Ashley’s attention, and Elliot soon followed her gaze.

“Susan? Are you okay? Do you need help?” Ashley said nervously. She slid off the couch and took the bowls of popcorn from her hands, setting them down on the side tables. Elliot picked up the dropped cutlery and fetched fresh chopsticks. “I’m sorry if that was too much, it’s just… I have a bunch of tests and projects this week and I won’t get another chance to do anything like that, but I didn’t want to distract anyone during the movie so I thought I’d get it out of the way beforehand but I guess we got carried away?”

Susan was amazed she’d managed all that in one breath. “It’s fine, really, it’s fine. You weren’t touching me, and you even kept your feet off the couch and everything. You were perfectly considerate, I just felt like I was intruding.”

“We’re in the middle of your lounge room. If we minded you seeing, we wouldn’t have done it here. But we probably should have checked with you how far was too far.” Elliot sounded apologetic, but not particularly embarrassed. Which, considering what she’d just seen, was absurd. Did he really not mind her staring as he made out with his girlfriend? How far did he think was too far, and could she live with herself if she tried to find out?

No. “We’ve got a movie to review, and a script to plan, so we’d best get started.” Susan sat at the other end of the couch and started the movie, which turned out to be yet another spy thriller. Several of the smaller parts were well done, but there just weren’t enough of them to cover over the long stretches of wooden leads and meaningless chase sequences. Ashley was perfectly well behaved throughout, merely playing a little with Elliot’s hand when the film got a little too dull. And while she’d thought the endless fight scenes would be broadly of interest to Elliot, she hadn’t quite counted on his eye for detail.

* * *

“That brawl in the parking lot had to be the most boring ‘exciting bit’ I’ve ever seen. They didn’t sell me on any stakes at all. I know that making a good action sequence involves half a dozen different roles working well together, but the performers just didn’t sell that either of them had ever been in a physical confrontation more important than a friendly arm-wrestle.” As usual, they’d moved to Susan’s room to use her computer for script notes. Unusually, Elliot was in full grumble mode – he could mostly see the good, or at least the silly, in any film that wasn’t glorifying some kind of bullying, but this seemed to have hit a new nerve.

“Don’t knock arm-wrestles, they can get pretty intense.” Susan, deadpan as always, got a chuckle out of Elliot and a slightly puzzled look from Ashley.

“I know, and I wasn’t, but when you get down to it, there’s nothing gained or lost except ego. People were supposed to live or die based on how well they fought right then, themselves included, and I wouldn’t have believed they were fighting for twenty bucks and a plastic trophy. The choreography was mediocre, the camera angles confusing, the editing and sound design bewildering, and on top of all that the actors moved with less poise than Brownie.” Everyone laughed at the mention of the Dunkels’ remarkably sleepy cat. Elliot even had a little chuckle at his own joke. 

Susan recovered her composure first, and tried to keep things on business “True. And I’m keeping ‘with less poise than a narcoleptic house-cat’ for the final script. If you won’t say it, I will.”

“It seems a little mean, but it is what I think. It’s like the chase from Into Darkness. Both those men can act, but neither of them can run and it shows.” Elliot rolled his eyes, but Susan was always happy to hear him work in a Star Trek reference. Even if it was Abrams.

“I get it, though I’m not sure any of the leads we just watched could act to begin with. Unless they were told to never show any emotion about anything, in which case they did that very well.”

Ashley slumped forwards a little, visibly relaxing. “So I wasn’t the only one feeling bored then? You two were watching so intensely and taking notes and everything, so I thought you must have liked it.”

“Nah, we sort of have to do that to have a good idea of what we need to talk about, and roughly where the good shots we might want to use in the video go. If you want to see Susan really engaged in something, put on some good imaginative science fiction. Or any of about two thirds of the Star Trek canon.” Elliot said with a smirk as he put his arm around Ashley’s shoulders.

“They’re the same thing and you know it. Besides, that’s not all I like to watch.” Susan was a little snippy about the small implied insults to both Star Trek and her tastes, but she also felt a little nervous to be treading so close to a secret she’d only trusted Justin with.

“So I was the only one here having a fun afternoon?” Ashley seemed crestfallen at the idea.

“You know I always have fun spending more time with you.” Elliot gave her a kiss on the cheek and a smile that warmed Susan’s heart a little just being near, but it seemed to have little impact

“Yeah, but… I don’t want to be a drag on Susan or anything.”

The poor girl had been nothing of the sort, and Susan figured some polite reassurance couldn’t hurt. “Ashley, this afternoon was much better for having you here. Otherwise, there just would’ve been the two of us and a bad movie.”

Elliot’s smile had shifted from inspiring to victorious, and it was now directed squarely at Susan. “I thought you might see it that way.”

“What?” Susan dreaded the conclusions he might have reached, but was genuinely thrown by how cheerfully he said that.

“Well, I’ve known you almost as long as Sarah has, and there’s not a lot of things that stop you in your tracks. Fear, disgust, outrage – you do things about those. You keep moving. But getting something you want, something you don’t think you deserve? That’ll do it every time. So no, I don’t think Star Trek is the only thing you like to watch.” Even as he cut through her defences and misdirection, Elliot’s voice was unfailingly kind.

Susan attempted a withering stare but she could feel the heat in her cheeks, and her heart wasn’t really in it either. She wasn’t sure if she was more embarrassed at being caught, or being caught by Elliot of all people. “You had nowhere near enough information to be certain of that.”

“I like making my friends happy. I’ve learned the hard way that I need to pay attention to what that looks like for different people. Besides, you didn’t see your face. Ashley made the same one the first time she watched me transform. Like she wasn’t sure if she was dreaming but didn’t want it to end either way.” Elliot smiled a little at the fond memory.

“I… okay I enjoyed it, but it was still wrong of me to stare like that.” Susan leaned back and scowled at herself. She’d been so careful about not interfering, not indulging, but in the moment she’d been so weak.

Ashley looked her square in the eyes and smiled. “We both meant what Elliot said earlier. We were in your lounge room. We didn’t think we were in private. And besides, I’ve watched you for hours on the review show. I’m flattered if you think I’m worth watching too.” Her voice was smooth and sweet and utterly untroubled by Susan’s darkest secrets spilling into the open.

“You didn’t hurt us. You didn’t do or say anything wrong, because you didn’t do or say anything. You just saw what we were willing to show you. And if we don’t have to worry about anyone being offended or upset, we might even do it again. Though up here we’d need to borrow your bed for a little.” Elliot’s inflection made it clear that the last part was a question, and the first sounded to Susan like ground rules: if she could stay silent and apart, she was welcome to watch.

Susan could tell they meant every word. She turned the word “willing” over in her head a few times and started to wonder if maybe the two of them enjoyed being watched the same way she enjoyed watching. She couldn’t speak, and she couldn’t refuse this fantasy come true if she tried. She nodded, eyes wide.

Elliot took a seat on the foot of the bed with spread legs and an evil grin. Ashley stood between his knees, leaning over him, one arm sweeping a few stray hairs behind his ear, then slowly tracing the outer shell of his ear. He groaned and his eyelids fluttered, then shut entirely with a loud gasp as she pinched his earlobe hard. His hands reached up between her shoulder blades as his head was dragged back and towards Susan, giving her a good view of the flush spreading to his cheeks. Then Ashley drew her own head down and pressed her lips against his, her other hand grabbing a fistful of his hair as they both filled the room with lascivious moans. Without taking her eyes off the pair, Susan quietly sidled over and shut the door. As she returned to her chair, Ashley broke the kiss and took Elliot by the shoulders, shoving him onto the bed with a thump.

Susan had seen the results of Elliot’s transformations on video a couple of times, but never the process. She was surprised how gradual it was, as his thighs became rounder, his face softened, his chest narrowed and pushed forward, his clothing shrinking down. There was definitely a kind of beauty to it, and Ashley was actually licking her lips in anticipation. Then Susan noticed that Elliot was actually taller, and his hair far shorter – almost entirely gone at the side, and a short shock of bright purple on top. In a sports bra and athletic shorts, he looked like a basketball player, if unusually well-endowed. Ashley finally broke the silence as she clambered over his hips. “Good choice.”

“You seemed to be in a climbing mood.” Elliot grinned at the compliment nonetheless, and used his longer arms to stroke her hair. She peppered his abdomen with kisses, then stalked on all fours towards his face, her ponytail adding to the catlike effect. Elliot’s hands ran over her head and traced the lines of her shoulder blades, then one pressed against her spine while the other danced along the tensed muscle of her weight-bearing arm. Ashley lowered her head to her lover’s neck, and there was a small wet sound as Elliot’s lower half writhed.

By this point, Susan couldn’t see much more than legs from her computer chair, though the little bits more included that Ashley was wearing shorts under her skirt, and that she was at least as dedicated to athletics as Elliot if her musculature was any guide. Biting her lip, she stood up and tried to find somewhere to stand near the wardrobe that would let her see just a little bit more. By now, Ashley was sitting on Elliot’s stomach, dragging her fingernails gently across his chest and then kissing the reddened skin left behind. Elliot was simply moaning in ecstasy, fighting a losing battle to keep his head up and his eyes open, drinking in the sight of the beautiful woman behind these sensations. Moving closer, Susan accidentally locked eyes with him for a moment, and felt her cheeks brighten to match the couple before her. If Elliot thought anything of that moment, he simply reached over to Ashley’s face and stroked her cheek. As she looked up, he reached behind her face and drew her into another kiss. Susan watched as their lips worked against each other, as Ashley’s free hand slipped between them, resting on Elliot’s breast, as Elliot’s teeth grabbed Ashley’s lower lip and she whimpered, collapsing on top of Elliot’s shoulder. For a moment, Susan could imagine that the pressure on her own lip was not from nervous habit, but from the unbridled passion of someone else – and in a way, it almost was.

Elliot was stroking Ashley’s hair slowly and gently, his jaw pressed against her forehead as she lay on top of him. “I think maybe that’s enough for now? Susan probably doesn’t want to sleep in a room that smells too much like our sweat.” 

Ashley sighed audibly. “That makes sense. And I should get home before it gets too late.” She took a deep breath and began the process of disentangling herself without falling off the bed.

Susan slowly dragged herself out of her stupor. Unsure what she wanted to ask, or could ask, she defaulted to something relatively safe. “What happened to using one female morph whenever you could?”

Elliot sat up, shrugged, and began morphing back. “I still use that most of the time, but I have a couple others for special occasions. It’s less of an issue since the involuntary morphs stopped happening anyway.”

Ashley was smoothing out her clothes and checking her bag when she added “The best perk about dating a shapeshifter is when they’ll do requests. There’s a lot of Violet to play with, too.”

“Violet?”

“You know how Rose Elliot was the name for the pink-haired form from the day with the griffins? It’s a handy convention. So, purple hair is Violet.” Elliot seemed somewhat embarrassed about this particular detail, which considering what he’d just done seemed a little incongruous.

Susan started wondering how many “special occasions” would warrant a naming convention for the different forms, and for the first time in minutes couldn’t look at her friends. She busied herself opening a window, because the room did smell of sweat a little and it would only get worse if it got stale. As she looked out and felt a breeze on her face, though, she found herself smiling. Today had been many things, but it had absolutely been special. So she turned back around and quietly said “Thank you”.

Elliot gave a ridiculously embellished bow. “No, thank you for a lovely afternoon. We can see ourselves out.” He turned and opened the door, and Ashley slipped through behind him.

Susan would normally check the locks after a guest left, but she _really_ needed a shower right then.


End file.
